Lazare Carnot (q.v.), the "Organizer of Victory," was, in fortification, a follower of Montalembert, and produced in 1797 a tenaille system (fig. 34) on strong and simple lines.
In 1812 Carnot offered three systems. For a dry and level site he recommended a bastioned trace; but for wet ditches and for irregular ground, tenaille traces. Both of these latter differ from his 1797 trace in that the re-entering angle is reinforced by a tenaille whose faces are parallel to the main faces and reach almost to the salients. There are also counterguards in front of the salients, whose ends overlap the ends of the tenaille. (N.B. To avoid confusion between the _tenaille trace_ and the _tenaille_, it should be noted that the latter is a low detached parapet placed in front of the escarp of the body of the place, partly as a shield, and partly as an additional line of defence. It is used in front of the curtain in the bastioned trace, and in the re-entering angle in the tenaille trace.)
Other important features of Carnot's work were: a continuous general retrenchment, or interior parapet, following more or less the lines of the main parapet; the use of the detached wall in place of the escarp revetment; and the countersloping glacis. This last (of which Carnot was not the inventor), instead of sloping gently outwards from a crest raised about 8 ft. down to the natural level of the ground, sloped inwards from the ground-level to the bottom of the ditch. The advantage of the additional obstacle of the counterscarp was thus lost to the defence. On the other hand, the besiegers' saps, as they progressed down the glacis, were exposed to a plunging fire from the parapet.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Mortar-casemate and Detached Wall.]
Carnot was also, like Coehoorn, a great believer in the mortar; but while Coehoorn introduced the small portable mortar that bears his name, Carnot expected great results from a 13 in. mortar throwing 600 iron balls at each discharge. He endeavoured to prove mathematically that the discharge of these mortars would in due course kill off the whole of the besieging force. These mortars he emplaced in open fronted mortar-casemates, in concealed positions. Fig. 35 shows in section one of these mortar-casemates, placed between the parapet of the retrenchment and a detached wall.